Our special speaker today is Reverend Laurence White.
Iíve heard his
testimony about his love and his passion to disciple first his family, his sons
and his daughter. Heís a pastor's pastor. Heís been involved in
shepherding his local church, but also shepherding and encouraging and inspiring
pastors around the country to be both salt and light, not one or the other. Not
just preach Jesus but preach everything that Jesus commanded us to do. And so
it is my great pleasure to invite to our platform at Midwestern
Seminary in Kansas City, our brother, the Reverend Dr. Laurence White.
Welcome brother, letís welcome:

DR. LAURENCE WHITE:

Thank you, and thank you, Dr. Whitehead. Itís a pleasure to be here. Iíve
never been introduced by an attorney before, this is a new experience. Much less
an attorney who is the President of a seminary, that is truly a unique
experience. Thank you for your kind words. It is a joy to be here with you
today. In a place where God has done great things, in a place where once again
you stand for the truth of Godís Word; for the verbal inspiration of
Scripture; for the inerrancy of that which God has written from the first
chapter of Genesis to the 22nd chapter of the book of Revelation. And
I applaud you for that stand, and I stand with you in that faith.

On the basis of that word today, we confront that which
is happening in our culture. Now Iím a Lutheran Christian, that means that
my historical and theological roots go back to Germany. And I find a context
for what is happening in America today in that which took place in that
great homeland of the Reformation in the 1930's and the 1940's.

Let me begin with a story about an incident that took
place a few years ago as a prominent Evangelical pastor was invited to
a Christian university on the East Coast to address the student body. And
upon his arrival on the campus, he was greeted by the President of that
institution, a distinguished looking older gentleman, with upswept white
hair, who spoke with a decided German accent. As they walked to the chapel
that day, the President requested permission to say a few words to the
students before the service itself actually began. And of course, you donít
say no to the President on his own campus and that permission was granted.
After the student body had gathered, the old gentleman walked to the rostrum
with the ramrod straightness that only a German has and he looked out over
the students assembled there, the picture of dignity and composure.

Gazing intently into the eyes of the young people in
front of him, he began. "For you," he said, "today
is a day like any other day but it is an extremely important and painful
day for me."
Silence fell over the room and the students noticed that as the old gentleman
spoke, tears were streaming down his face. This uncharacteristic display of
emotion stunned the student body and riveted their attention.

"Today
is November the 9th" he continued"the
50th anniversary
of "Kristal Nacht," the Night of the Broken Glass. On this
day in 1938, Nazi thugs moved through the cities of Germany smashing the windows
of German homes and shops, burning the synagogues. Innocent people; men, women
and children were beaten and killed simply because they were Jews.

"I was there as a young man," he sobbed, "and
I can still hear the sound of the shattering glass. There were many of
us who were Christians then but we did nothing. We looked the other way
and we did nothing. That was the beginning of the Holocaust because the
Jew haters knew then that no one would stop them, no one would stand in
their way."
The old man went on
to quote the words inscribed at the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, a place where
so many died. "Never again," he pleaded, "Christian
young people we must never let it happen again."

My friends, it is happening again. It is happening again today in our
beautiful America. So richly and abundantly blessed by a gracious God. It is
happening today as the innocent are slaughtered in a twenty-seven year Holocaust that has
seen nearly forty million little boys and girls brutally done to death. It is
happening again as families are fractured and marriages are broken, while
self-obsessed people pursue the immediate gratification of their every desire.
It is happening again as militant homosexuals pursue absolute approval, complete
acceptance, and preferential legal treatment for their perversion. It is
happening again as our young people lost their way, and often their lives, in a
maze of alcohol and drugs and the corridors, and classrooms of the high schools
of our land are littered with the bodies of murdered teenagers. It is happening
again as the nation's leaders wallow in decadence and deceit, while the people
look on in apathetic indifference. It is happening again.

For while the killing goes on and the nation is led
down the path of destruction, the church and her pastors stand silent and
afraid. This country that we love, our America, is fighting for her life.
Not against the military power of foreign enemies, but against the principalities
and powers of this dark age. You and I, as sons and daughters of the Lord
Jesus Christ, but even more so, those of you here today who are pastors
of the church of Jesus Christ, are being called upon to take a stand in
this moment of crisis. And let there be no one among us who doubts the
urgency of this hour. To compare what is happening in America today to
Nazi Germany is no mere flight of rhetorical exaggeration.

This nation is heedlessly stumbling toward third millennium
darkness. Look around you and read the signs of the times. Look beyond
the walls of our beautiful sanctuaries, and the comfort of our padded pews
to see the chaos, the corruption, and the confusion that reigns throughout
our culture.

We live in a society where passions are riderless horses,
uncontrolled and uncontrollable, in which there is a desolation of decency.
In which love has become a jungle emotion, lust exalted to lordship, sin
elevated to sovereignty, Satan adored as a saint, and man magnified above
his maker.

Americans have come
to dwell in an Alice in Wonderland world of fantasy and self-delusion.
Everything has been turned upside down and inside out in our America. Right is
wrong, and wrong is right, good is bad, and bad is good, normal is abnormal, and
abnormal is normal, true is false, and false is true. We are fast degenerating
into a decadent culture obsessed with selfishness and sin, death and
destruction.

In the face of this relentless onslaught of evil, the
church of Jesus Christ has grown timid and afraid. We have abandoned the
truth of Godís Word,
compromised the stern demands of His Law, tailored our message to meet the felt
needs of sinful men, (as if sinful men ever knew what they actually needed) and
prostituted ourselves and the Gospel that we profess to proclaim, for worldly
popularity and success.

We, as Christian pastors, seem to have forgotten that
God did not call us to be popular or successful, God called us to be faithful.
Faithful preaching never comes in the form of safely vague, pious platitudes.
Faithful preaching must identify and denounce the false gods of this world
that call upon our people to bow down before them every day. God did not
call us to be successful CEOs, protecting institutional peace and tranquility,
bringing in the bodies and the bucks by avoiding controversy, and telling
everybody what they wanted to hear.

God called us to proclaim His Word, to be vigilant watchmen
standing high upon the walls of Zion, sounding forth the clear clarion call
of the trumpet, calling out Godís people to war against the host of evil advancing
all around us. We as the Christians of America, we as the pastors of America,
have failed in this responsibility before God, and our country is paying a
dire price for that failure. Make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters,
we are responsible.

The great reformer Martin Luther once declared that
the preacher who does not rebuke the sins of the rulers through Godís Word
spoken publically, boldly and honestly, strengthens the sins of the tyrants,
and becomes a partaker in them, and bears responsibility for them.

Now note carefully Lutherís words. They
ought to sear the conscience of every pastor in America today. The preacher who
does not speak out becomes a participant in the wickedness of the tyrants and
bears responsibility for it. We cannot shift that responsibility to anyone else
today. We cannot blame the liberal media, or the corrupt politicians, or the
apathetic public for that which has overtaken America. This is our fault, for we
are the ones whom God placed here at this moment in our nationís history to be
the stinging salt and the shining light. We are responsible for what has
happened to America. In this year of our Lord, 2000, there is no Pontius Pilotís
basin that can cleanse the hands of Americaís pastors from the guilty stain of
innocent blood.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he
scornfully dismissed the church, and her pastors, as an irrelevant force
which posed no threat to the Nazi agenda for that great nation. "I promise
you," he
boasted to his inner circle, "that if
I wish to I could destroy the church in just a few years. It is hollow, it
is rotten, and false through and through. One push and the whole structure
would collapse."

"We should trap the preachers," he said, "by
their notorious greed and self-indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle
everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a
few years reprieve, why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in
order to keep their material advantage. The parsons will be made to dig
their own graves, they will betray their God for us, they will betray anything
for the sake of their miserable jobs and incomes."

The dictator's words proved to be tragically accurate. The great majority of
Christians in Germany looked the other way and minded their own business. They
kept their religion and their politics strictly separate from one another, and
refused to vote on the basis of single issues which would have set them apart
from the rest of the electorate. They blended in and they went along and they
followed the path of least resistance. They did that which was expedient and
practical and safe, while their country was dragged down into a swirling
maelstrom of barbarism and death.

Only a few lonely voices were raised in protest. In
1940 Nazi Germany was near her zenith, the nationís power, prestige, and prosperity unparalleled in
history, her armies invincible on every front. The Jews had been systematically
excluded from the life of the nation, deprived of the protection of the law and
citizenship, gradually disappearing into the spreading network of concentration
camps. In that year, 1940, at the height of Hitlerís power and popularity, a
courageous, young pastor, named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, denounced the churches
failure to speak out against the evil.

In 1940, that lonely voice of truth proclaimed, "We
the church must confess that we have not proclaimed often or clearly enough
the message of the One God who has revealed Himself for all time in Christ
Jesus, and who will tolerate no other gods beside Himself. She must confess
her timidity, her cowardice, her evasiveness and her dangerous concessions.
She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the
innocent was crying aloud to heaven. The church must confess that she has
witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual
suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred, and murder.
And that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims. And has
not found way to hasten to their aid.

"The church
is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of Jesus
Christ. The church must confess that she has desired security and peace, quiet,
possession, and honor to which she has no right. She has not born witness to the
truth of God and by her silence, she has rendered herself guilty, because of her
unwillingness to suffer for what she knows to be right."

Bonhoeffer's
warning went unheeded. He was dismissed by most of his colleagues as a single
issue fanatic. In less that five years, he was dead, hung naked from a piano
wire noose, in Flossenburg concentration camp.

Germany lay in ruins. Her great cities bombed out of
existence. Cathedrals that had stood for a thousand years reduced to piles
of broken brick, rubble. In the face of monstrous evil, he who keeps silent
fails in his responsibility before God and shares in the guilt.

The moral meltdown that has overtaken America has been
met with a deafening silence from the pulpits of America, and the people-pleasing
preachers who presume to stand in them. This desolation of decency could
not have occurred if the pulpits of this land were once again aflame with
righteousness. To use Alexis De Toquevilleís famous words, "By
our apathy, by our acquiescence, and by our ignorance, the church of Jesus
Christ has consigned itself to irrelevance and impotence in the ongoing
struggle for the soul of America."

Our political leaders deal in trivialities and superficial
nonsense, practicing the feel-good politics of deliberate ambiguity, while
the destruction of our families, the perversion of our most basic moral
principals, and the murder of innocent, unborn children goes on, and on,
and on.

Those candidates in
the presidential primaries who denounced the evil of abortion, and stood
unequivocally for moral values, against the corruption of our times, never rose
out of single digits in the polls. And therefore, they were never considered
serious contenders in this election cycle, and the moral issues for which they
stood were pushed aside in favor of more practical considerations. We have come
to this sorry state because Christian voters were more concerned about
electability, than about integrity. The result, to use the words of former
President Gerald Ford is, "We have an election in which candidates
without ideas, hire consultants without convictions, to carry out campaigns
without content."

Throughout the mind-boggling series of scandals that have
gushed out of Washington like filth from a sewer in recent years, the endless
refrain of the beltway establishment and the media elite has been, "Weíve got to get
on with the nationís business." Well folks, there was a time not too
long ago, when righteousness and decency and justice were the nation's business.
And unless that time comes again soon, this nation will not endure. John Adams
once warned that the problem with democracy is that you get the leaders you
deserve. This sad spectacle ought to remind us that a people who cannot control
themselves, cannot govern themselves. Itís not the economy, stupid. Itís the
morality, stupid.

The issue before us as Christians and as Christian pastors is faithfulness to
the Word of God, and submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To speak to the
great moral issues of our day is an integral and essential part of that
God-given responsibility. To fail to do so is nothing less than a denial of the
Lordship of Jesus.

Pastor Martin Niemueller was yet another of that lonely
band of Christian heroes who stood against the tide of evil in Nazi Germany.
He was arrested by the Gestapo for faithfully preaching the Word of God.
Now Niemueller was what we would today call a celebrity. He was a national
hero. He had been a U-boat commander, highly decorated, in the first world
war and only then, after the war, did he enter the ministry. His congregation,
in the Berlin suburb of Dahlum, was one of the wealthiest and most influential
evangelical churches in the land. Its membership made up of high government
officials, generals, and so on. And the arrest of this pastor from that
church was highly controversial.

The judge before whom he was arraigned on charges of
sedition seemed genuinely puzzled why a patriot like Martin Niemueller
would criticize Adolf Hitler, the man whom the German people hailed as
their Fuhrer, an absolute leader, to whom unquestioning obedience was owed.
The magistrate pleaded with the minister to end his attacks on the Nazi
regime and upon the Fuhrer. He promised Niemueller immediate release, and
the opportunity to return to his pulpit today, if only he would agree to
do so. Niemuellerís reply was
steadfast, "I cannot, and I will not be silent," he said, "because
God is my Fuhrer."

Our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ must take precedence
over any other loyalty in every part of our lives. If the Lord Jesus is
truly our Lord, then we must serve Him. If the Lord Jesus is truly our
Lord, then He cannot be safely compartmentalized to one place, one time,
one day of the week, with one group of people, while we live like the heathen
all the rest of the time. If the Lord Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, He
cannot be left outside of the ballot box like an unneeded umbrella when
we go in to vote. We must serve Him in all that we do. We must participate
in this democracy that He has given us. Not as rock-ribbed republicans
or yellow-dog democrats, not as liberals or conservatives, not as men or
women, not as labor or management, not as senior citizens who want to protect
social security, or as wage earners who want their taxes lower, not as
whites or blacks, or Asians or Hispanics, but as sons and daughters of
the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must participate in this democracy as
Christians. For only then, will America turn from the path of destruction. But
as we participate, we must be careful to maintain our theological and moral
integrity.

God has not called us to be social agitators or reformers,
He has called us to be faithful spokesmen for His Word. Politics is the
art of the possible. Christianity is the art of the impossible. The politician
always has his eye on the next election. The Christian pastor must always
have his eye on eternity. There is only one Savior, and His name will not
be appearing on any election ballot in this particular cycle or any other.

We dare never labor under the
illusion that the Kingdom of God is about to arrive aboard Air Force One. Nor
may we ever allow the church of Jesus Christ to be reduced to the status of a
sanctimonious shill for a political candidate, party, or philosophy.

The Roman statesman, historian, Pliny Legonier once observed, "The
common people find all religions to be true. The philosophers find all religions
to be false. The politicians find all religions to be useful." When we
as Christian pastors participate in this democracy, our participation must be
prophetic, not political. We must summon this nation and its leaders to
repentance, as we relentlessly proclaim the truth of God. What America needs
essentially, is not merely a change in administration, what America needs is
a spiritual rebirth.

There are a great many issues under debate in the political
arena today about which the pastor should have nothing whatsoever to say.
Where Godís Word does
not speak, there His spokesman must be silent. When we profess to speak for God
let us be absolutely certain that it is Godís will we express, not our own
inclinations or opinions. But where Godís will does speak, on the fundamentals
of life, morality, and family, there Godís pastors must address the issues. On
the basis of Scripture, without equivocation, and without hesitation.

God may
have not endorsed a particular method for tax reform but of this one thing we
can be absolutely certain, the Lord God Almighty hates the murder of innocent,
unborn children. God is not the mascot of the republican or the democratic
parties, but let there be no doubt whatsoever about this, the Creator instituted
holy marriage as the lifelong union of a man and a woman. Any other combination,
no matter how modern, innovative, or politically correct, is a perversion of the
divine intent.

That prophetic witness will not be welcome by those
politicians on either side of the aisle, who seek only to preserve their
own position and power. We who profess to speak for God must proclaim the
truth in the political world of diplomatic double talk and deliberate evasion.
Once again, that wonít make us
popular, but God did not call us to be popular, He called us to be faithful.
And we as His spokesman, must be willing to pay the high personal price
that that faithfulness requires.

The morning after Pastor Martin Niemueller was arrested,
the Lutheran chaplain was making his rounds in the city jail. And as he
entered Niemuellerís cell he
was astounded and dismayed to find his fellow clergyman sitting there under
arrest. "My brother!" he exclaimed, "what did you do?
Why are you here?" Niemueller, never at a loss for words immediately
reacted, "My brother, given what is happening in our country, why arenít
you here?"

Those days have not yet come in America, but they are
coming soon. We have already seen the ominous beginnings of attempts to
muzzle Christian witness on radio and television, to label rejections of
abortion and homosexuality as "hate speech." In Europe and Canada
significant steps have already been taken in that direction. And if present
trends continue, America will not be far behind.

Gentleman and ladies, it is only a short step from prohibiting
that which is politically incorrect as hate speech in the media, to prohibiting
in the pulpits of every church in America. My brothers, given what is happening
in our country, why arenít you here?

The saddest and most tragic feature of the Christian
experience in Germany was the bitter expression of regret that came from
so many afterwards, who realized their failure only too late. One such
man was a University professor and a diplomat named, Albrecht Haushoffer. He
was a quiet, gentle man who wrote poetry in his spare time. As gradually
he came to recognize the enormity of the evil of Nazism, he was drawn into
the resistance and arrested in 1944 after the failure of the Stauffenburg
plot to assassinate Hitler.

In the final days of the war, as the Russian tanks moved
through the outskirts of the city of Berlin, and the dictator hid in the
Fuhrer bunker like a rat trapped in his hole, the SS Guards at the Mobed
City Prison were given a list of those who were not to be allowed to survive
the downfall of Nazism because they knew too much. Albrecht Haushofferís name was included on that death list. A
group of seven or eight prisoners was taken out of their cells that
morning. They were told they were about to be released. Each of the prisoners was
assigned an SS Guard. They were led out of the jail into the nearby Tiergarten,
the great park in the center of the city of Berlin. And as they came to the
middle of that park, out of sight from anyone else, each guard stepped up behind
the prisoner assigned to him and shot them in the back of their heads. The
bodies were abandoned there in the snow and the mud of the ruined city.

Sometime later Albrechtís brother heard rumors of what had happened, and he
hurried into the park to search for his brotherís body. And when he found it,
there clutched in his hand was a blood stained sheet of paper. Written on that
paper was a poem that Haushoffer had composed just a few hours before his
execution. It was entitled in German, Schuldig Bin Ich, I am Guilty.

"The
burden of my guilt," the condemned man wrote, "before
the law weighs light on my shoulders. To plot and conspire was my duty to the
people. I would have been a criminal had I naught. I am guilty, although not
in the way that you think. I should have done my duty sooner. I was wrong. I
should have called the evil more clearly by its name. I hesitated to condemn
for far too long. I now accuse myself within my own heart. I have betrayed my
conscience for far too long. I have deceived myself and my fellow man. I knew
the course of evil from its start. My warning was not loud enough or clear
enough. Today, as I die, I know what I am guilty of."

We, too, have known the evil from its start. In this
great nation, where for twenty-seven long years the innocent unborn have
been slaughtered, we have grown accustomed to the killing and have gone
on with our business, with our lives, and our ministries, while the little
ones have perished, every day, 4,500 a day. This is what we have come to
in America. The Supreme Court of our land sanctions the horror of partial
birth abortion, this most barbaric and grotesque killing of a child in
the midst of its birth.

And yet even in the face of this abomination,
the churches of America, the pastors of America, are silent. Where is the cry of
outrage!? Where is the indignation of the people of God? We, too have known the
evil from its start. Dumpsters full of ravaged infant bodies stand in mute
testimony to our failure and to our guilt.

The Christians of Germany realized only too late how
much had been at stake and how much they had lost. But we still may have
a chance. It's not too late, yet, for our America. The righteous judgment
of God has not yet come upon us. The New Testament speaks of unique moments
of divine destiny, when God confronts His people with a challenge, and
offers them an opportunity. The Greek word for such a moment of divine
destiny is Kairos. I believe that the Christian church in America has come
to such a time, a Biblical Kairos. A moment of divine destiny.

If we fail to meet this challenge, and rise to this
opportunity, our nation will not survive. It is as simple, and as stark
as that. This is our moment, my friends. Our time of testing. I pray that
we may be equal to the challenge of these days; that we may seize this
precious opportunity from God; that we may be within this dying culture
the stinging salt that stops the decay of death; the shining light that
dispels the darkness of doubt and despair, that America may once again
be the gleaming city set high upon a hill, that shines as a beacon light
of life and hope for this nation, and to every nation.

I pray that we may serve
the Lord Jesus Christ with courage, and with honor, for the glory of His name.
That we may snatch our country back from the brink of destruction, and preserve
this legacy of faith and freedom for those who will come after us. This is our
moment of divine destiny, our Kairos.

In the winter of 1943, a group of university students
in Munich, calling themselves the White Rose, began a desperate effort
to awaken the young people of that nation to the malignant evil that had
engulfed their country. Led by a twenty-five year old student named Hans
Scholl, they distributed leaflets across the campus in a doomed effort
to provoke resistance to the Hitler regime. Six leaflets were written.
Number four in the series included this desperate plea, a plea which could
have been written today, a plea which could have been addressed to us.

Scholl wrote, "Everywhere, and at all times of
greatest trial, men have appeared, prophets and saints, who cherished their
freedom, who preached the one God, and who with His help, brought the people
to a reversal of their downward course. I ask you now, as a Christian,
wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure, why do you hesitate!?
Why are you inclined toward intrigue, calculation, and procrastination?
Are you hoping that someone else will raise his arm in your defense? God
has given you the strength. God has given you the will to fight. We must
attack the evil now, where it is strongest."

Their
valiant effort was crushed. After only a few weeks, Shoal and his young comrades
were beheaded by the Gestapo.

They died for their faith but their words reverberate
down across the years to us in America, today. To a nation that has been
blessed more richly than any other nation in the history of mankind. Their
words come to us. Why do you hesitate? God has given you the strength.
God has given you the will to fight. We must attack the evil now where
it is strongest.

Christians of America, this
is our Kairos, our moment of divine destiny. God has give us this time, let us
use it to His glory. To that end may our gracious God bless you, and may God
bless our America. Thank you.

DR. MICHAEL WHITEHEAD:

Amen. Well our spirit resonates with his spirit and the Spirit testifies what
he has preached is truth which we now have the duty to obey. I am going to
surprise Dick Bott and ask him if he would make his way to the platform. I would
like him to lead us in a closing prayer. This taping of this chapel service will
be recorded and then sent to the Focus on the
Family headquarters. But itís our prayer that this was not just an event
that would mobilize and motivate the folks here, but God would use this Chapel
message to motivate Americans, American Christians, to do right and obey God, to
be involved in the ballot box as well as in their homes, to vote Biblically as
well as to live Biblically in their daily lives. And a man who has that passion
in his heart is my dear friend, Dick Bott. Iíll ask Dick to close us in
prayer, say any word you would like to in greeting, Dick, and then pray for us.

DICK BOTT:

What a pleasure it is to be here. Iíve not been here
before but I have certainly followed, been so interested in, the ministry
of this seminary. Certainly not just in the Kansas City area but across
America. We meet in groups; churches, congregations and other gatherings.
But the truth is we know that as Christians we are accountable to God individually.
I heard this man speak in a sermon on Focus on the Family some months ago,
I had not met him before this morning, but his words penetrated my heart,
and being here today with you, and hearing this in person is just an honor
and a privilege for me. Shall we pray.

"Thank you, Lord, that we can know that You hear
our prayer. And with that in mind, Lord, we ask You to fill our own hearts
with courage, overflowing with commitment; to be just a little of what
You would have us be, as an act of worship to Thee. Thanks for this seminary.
Thank You for what it stands
for. Thank You for its message in preparation of young men and women; preparing
to be Your servants in such a wonderful way. Thank You for this meeting now,
Lord, we pray that You will be with us as we go our way, never having forgotten
what we heard here today. In Thy Name, Amen."